Preggo Update

Since it has been a good few weeks since I've blogged about anything, let me do a little pregnancy update. 

*I am currently 30 weeks pregnant!  The countdown is really on since we are down to single digit weeks left!!

*I had my 28 week testing done (glucose, STDs, AIDS, iron, blood work, etc.) and everything came back normal!  That was great to hear so I knew that Caroline and I were doing well!!

*At my last doctors appointment (29 weeks), I had high blood pressure.  It was the Monday after Christmas and I had spent the past 5 days eating anything and everything I wanted.  It was all DELICIOUS, but I don't think all the sodium did me any good!  I go back next week and I'm praying it's back down because as much as I would love to be at home right now, I want to have all the time I can with Caroline when she gets here!

*At this point I would LOVE to have another ultrasound.  It's been so long since we've seen our little girl and I would love to know that everything really is going well in there.

*She is growing and growing...and I have a belly to prove it!  There is certainly no denying that I am pregnant.  I need to post some more pictures!  At the last visit my fundal height was right on and her heart beat was good, so sounds like things are moving right along!

*She moves around a lot, but I can also tell that she is sleeping a lot.  PLEASE let that be the case once she gets out here!

*She LOVES a basketball game!  Anytime I go to one of Jason's basketball games she is wil'n out the whole time!!  I thought it was just the loud noises, but Jason and I recently spent New Year's with some of my best friends from college and poor Patrick kept trying to feel her move and she didn't move a lick when he was around and the music was pretty bumping.  Guess she only performs for her daddy!!

*We started our Birth and Beginnings class last night.  It was quite the interesting evening with a video on the different stages of labor, visuals for the sizes of dilation, and different relaxation techniques that we can use during labor.  The instructor would say something and Jason would turn to me and say, 'Write that down.'  We have some good notes for him to review once the day gets here!  To sum up the first night of class, all I can say is, 'Give me an epidural right now!'  I have no need to prove to anyone how much of a woman I am!  We have four more classes to attend and I'm pretty sure by the end we will be faced with realization that she is close to being here!

*After the Birth and Beginnings class we are going to take a breastfeeding class.  A friend of one of my good friends said she took one and it did wonders for her.  Maybe it will make me a little more confident about the whole breastfeeding idea.  I have all intentions of breastfeeding for the first good few months.  I am also aware of the fact that breastfeeding is not easy and I'm not going to put any unnecessary pressure on myself.  I am going to do the very best that I can, but formula feeding a baby is not the end of the world!

*We have our Pac 'N Play and our travel system!  Our parents have been so great and we already have a couple of big ticket items that are ready to go.  Showers start in the next couple of weeks.  I can't wait to see and get to spend time with everyone and begin to get things ready!  I'm sure the nesting instinct will kick in pretty soon after we start getting stuff!!

I feel like I have been pregnant for forever.  Between the miscarriage and any pregnancy being 10 months long, I am ready for her to get here.  I'm sure these next few weeks are going to fly.  Between school, birthing classes, showers, softball, and Leslie's Jack being on the way, we'll get to March in no time!

Caroline’s Nursery

We have been working for weeks on Caroline’s nursery.  Between teaching, coaching, families, traveling, social lives, and sleeping – we don’t have huge chunks of time to designate to a single project.  But, we are both anal retentive and like to have things the right way.  As soon as we found out we were having a girl, we ordered the bedding.  We had had the crib and the dresser since earlier in the year when we got pregnant the first time.  They have been in their boxes in the garage and calling to me every single day to get them out and put them together.  So instead of writing this whole long story, I’m going to let the pictures tell you what we’ve been through over these past weeks!

 

We started out with a beige room (ceiling and walls) with a huge eye sore of a fake attic entrance in the ceiling.  It had crown molding around it and it was all I saw when I walked into the room.  We knew that had to go away if we wanted to have the room we really had in mind.

So Ja pulled off the crown molding, bought some sheet rock and plastered that hole up.  He did such a good job and you can’t even tell there was something there!  We also did away with that heinous light fixture!

Documented proof that we did enjoy ourselves in between trying to rip each other’s head off.  We knew if we could make it through the nursery remodel…we would be just fine!

Once we got the ceiling patched, it was time to paint.  The ceilings got a fresh coat of bright white paint and the walls are a bright teal.  In the bedding we got there were all sorts of colors, including baby pink and hot pink, but since I can’t really get into the whole baby pink thing, we figured this teal would be something bright, fun, and different.  I LOVED it instantly.

We painted the whole room, but left a little bit at the top because Ja was going to attempt to put crown molding up around the room. 

Ja working away!

And he did a GREAT job!  The crown molding and the white contrasted to the teal looks amazing!  Exactly what we had in mind!

We got rid of the light fixture that was in there and got a new white fan.  It will help keep in cool in the summer time and helps to hide the spot on the ceiling.

These poor dogs have no idea what is about to happen to them.  They can’t stand to not be in the room with us and helping us with EVERYTHING that we do.  They are going to be great big brothers, though, and I can’t wait to see them with Caroline.

This is our dresser.  It is Baby Cache and it was different than a lot of cribs and dressers we had found.  We thought we’d go espresso like our bedroom furniture, but for some reason, we both instantly loved this.  It is extremely well made and very sturdy and well worth every penny.  This will soon house the changing pad and supplies, as well as a Diaper Genie, once we get closer!

Ja has been so excited about getting this room together and has had some GREAT ideas that have just added so much color and personality to the room.  He got these letters and the dragonfly as plain wooden figures at Michael’s for about $1.  He then used the wall color and our hot pink accent paint to make those match the room.  Her initials and the dragonfly are on the door to her room.

We knew we wanted to put her name up in the room somehow.  We had thought about getting letters and hanging them with ribbon like we had seen before.  We started talking about different ideas and eventually came up with this.  We got the letters at Michael’s for about $2 each and Ja painted each one with our hot pink paint.  We then bought a picture frame that was bright white.  We mounted just the frame to the wall and then put the letters inside attached to the wall.  And, voila!, Caroline has a home!

This is our crib and bedding and I LOVE LOVE it.  We looked and looked and looked and just didn’t love any of the girl bedding.  Some of it is absolutely HEINOUS and someone thinks that it is beautiful.  Since I’m not into girly, pinky, princessy stuff, it made it a little difficult.  But when we saw this, it was very simple and perfect.  It is from Pottery Barn Kids, which we had to justify spending that much money, but we figured this is our first child and if we want to splurge a little bit, Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday, and Happy Anniversary for the next year or so.  That is for the bedding and all the other stuff we got for the room!

This is the crib side of the room in all it’s lovely goodness!

Another crib view.  At Target we found this beanbag chair.  It has floppy antennae and feet and is the cutest thing!  We have names her Lucy the Ladybug and we’re sure we’ll have more than a few pictures of Caroline sitting on that beanbag chair when she is a little thing!

This is one of my favorite things that we have found at Target.  We have named him Scooter.  He is a night light and he is covered with soft baby clue silicone and to turn him on and off you just tap him on the head!

Another piece of Target goodness.  This is an alphabet print for above the book shelf.  We loved the selection for all the letters and it will be fun to use that to teach Caroline her ABCs!

We also got this bookshelf at Target.  It is a Closet Maid cube and the baskets are Closet Maid, also.  We used stuffed animals that we had from our childhood and a few things that we have already been given as gifts.  I’m sure we’ll add a lot of books to that collection!  The teddy bear on top we got at Cracker Barrel for $10!  Love that place!  And that’s Scooter glowing on top of the shelf!

We knew we wanted a rocker/glider of some sort, but we just couldn’t pay the prices that people were asking for them.  So we went to American Furniture Warehouse in Greensboro and got this chocolate brown recliner for a steal.  The bedding quilt is on it, as well as a pillow we got from my Aunt JoAnn.  The side table is another Closet Maid cube and the lamp we got at Target. 

Ja taking a break and enjoying his hard work.  He is also catching up on some What To Expect!  We feel pretty good about where the nursery is right now, but I’m sure we’ll have PLENTY of additions by the time Caroline gets here!  I hope she loves it as much as we do!!

Being Pregnant

People very sweetly ask me all the time how I am feeling.  The best thing I can say is that being pregnant is the easiest thing I do all day.  Between teaching, working at school, working at home, being a wife, being a mom to two mammoth four legged animals, and being pregnant – pregnancy is by far the easiest.  Sure I’m tired a lot and I have some new things going on with my body, but nothing I can’t handle and didn’t know I was signing up for when we got into this whole mess!  Caroline is just growing in my growing belly and it just kind of happens whether I think about it or not.  Don’t take this like I don’t care – I LOVE being pregnant.  It just feels really natural and like something I was meant to do.  I love feeling her karate chop my innards and watching Jason feel her move around.  This has been such a great time in our lives.  I just am not completely consumed with it.  I am still me and I still have lots of jobs to do…Caroline is just along for the ride!

22 Weeks

23 Weeks

Bixing Stuff

When I was growing up, my Deddy could bix anything (yes, I know that says bix instead of fix.  That's how I said it for a long time and we still say that Deddy has 'bixed' something!).  He could bix cars, the house, the yard, toys, appliances and anything else that can break - sometimes to my mom's dismay.  Usually when things break, that means that you have to get a new thing to replace it with.  In my mom's case, when something would break or stop working and there would be the possibility of getting something new, my dad would come in and bix it right up!!  He still bixes anything that goes wrong with the house and we call him Collins Garage because we take our cars to him for our big tune ups.  He still changes his own oil and brake pads and does a lot of the maintenance on both of their cars.

He is very handy around the house due to his years of working construction and having an engineering brain, but when he doesn't know how to do something, he researches it and figures it out.  He has had a lot of 'All You Gotta Do' projects through the years.  That phrase comes from saying, 'Well, all you gotta do is just replace that part.'  Then 12 hours and several 'damn its' later you have the entire thing disassembled on the floor and the part is still yet to be replaced. 

Now that we have begun to work on the nursery, Jason has been introduced to the 'All You Gotta Do' projects.  He hasn't had a lot of work in construction and those types of jobs, so he is having to learn as he goes.  He has removed crown molding and an absolutely absurd fake attic entrance from the ceiling in the nursery and replaced it with sheet rock and orange peel.  He has installed crown molding all the way around the ceiling.  He has laid plywood in the attic to give us some more storage space.  He will soon be assembling the crib and furniture we bought a while ago.  I love the fact that he is willing to tackle those jobs and even if he doesn't know what he is doing when he starts, he has done a great job and is becoming quite the handy man himself.  I'm very proud of the work he has done and what we have been able to make the nursery become.

One day, Caroline will be running around asking her Daddy if he can bix some of her stuff!  And I'm sure there will be plenty more projects in Papa's future with all of these youngins running around!!

Free to Breathe 2010


On March 14, 2006, my best childhood friend, Maggie, lost her dad to lung cancer.  Their family was an incredible close family and it was a very hard thing to watch and be a part of.  They still miss him every day and so do the rest of us.

On November 6th in Raleigh, I met up with Maggie and her family and friends to walk a 5k around the NC State campus to raise money for lung cancer research.  Since we are all spread out over the state (and soon the world), I don't get to see the Austins as much as I would like to, so it was a great, great morning.  We got to honor CW and his battle and also go to spend time and enjoy those that we have with us now.  Free to Breathe is a relatively new organization and I look forward to being a part of the walk for many years to come!!  I'll post pictures once I get some!!

Baby Girl

Now that we are in full nursery mode (more on that later) I have ideas flowing out of my dome.  One thing I definitely want to incorporate is the song 'Baby Girl' by Will Hoge.  It is the song that my dad and I danced to at Jason and my wedding and since we're having our own baby girl, I think it is appropriate.  This song brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it.  It is exactly what any parent could want for a child and certainly what I want for my little baby girl.

May the sunlight find your face

Even when the rain does fall

And get back on your feet again

Every time you slip and fall

Keep your heart wide open

And always taking in

And even when it's broken

Be strong enough to fix it up again

Oh little baby girl

Sweet little baby girl

I wish I could hold your hand in this great big world

Oh little baby girl

And I hope your hands are steady

And never need to make a fist

And I hope that when you're ready

You get one never ending kiss

And I hope that deep inside of you

There's a sweet eternal song

And I hope the words are pretty

And that you'll always sing along

And I hope your friends are many

And your laughter's always loud

To help you when you're lonely

And pick you up when you're down

I hope your eyes shine bright love

And learn to see the light

Take the time to listen

Decide yourself what's wrong or right

Oh little baby girl

Sweet little baby girl

Be strong in this great big world

Oh little baby girl

It's A Girl!

We went to the doctor on October 11th and we saw a hoo-ha!!  Caroline Grace - coming in March 2011!!